Welcome to Warehouse and Operations as a Career and to 2020! I\u2019m Marty and I thought we\u2019d talk a little about seeking employment or finding a job today. Its just not as easy as it sounds. No matter what industry were in. 2 weeks ago, we talked about the millions of square feet of warehouse space being built every year, and there\u2019s no end in sight. Look around the room you\u2019re in now! Everything you see came thru a warehouse, has been on a trailer or container, well, unless grandma or our kids made it for us. It was produced or manufactured in a facility, then trucked to a distribution facility, and delivered to us - the end user. I\u2019m a little biased towards operations, I\u2019ve always felt like it\u2019s the perfect career choice, even for a first job.
\nWe\u2019ve learned about the many different positions, unskilled labor or utility work, to skilled positions like machine or equipment operators to the transportation fields and logistics. Even the tech fields in operations today can take us to so many positions on a global scale. We\u2019ve talked about all the great positions and fields of logistics, man, if I had the opportunity to do it all over again! Seriously though, Operations, Warehousing and Transportation are those opportunities we\u2019re looking for wither we plan on continuing our education or we\u2019re ready to join the workforce after high school. Service jobs like restaurants and retail are good jobs and there easy to find, there always hiring. But let\u2019s say we\u2019re planning way ahead, know what we want to do and earn, say 10 years down the road. We\u2019ll need to start learning something, getting experiences we can build upon. Running through 5 or 6 restaurants or department stores isn\u2019t really going to build skills will it. Now of course if we enjoy the work, they can offer us great opportunities in management and advancements such as procurement and merchandising maybe. I know one lady that worked for a national department store right out of high school and today she is responsible for all their fashion purchasing. She travels all over the globe. But she\u2019s been with the same company since graduation and didn\u2019t skip around or have those 5 or 6 different jobs. She loves her career choice!
\nSo, it\u2019s the first week of the year. Everyone\u2019s making those new year resolutions, a rabbit hole let\u2019s not go down today, but let\u2019s walk through how we\u2019d go about planning for our new job! I guess we ought a look at both new jobs and planning a career move though.
\nOk, a job. It\u2019s important to remember that a job that we enjoy and are passionate about is just fine, its great actually. Let\u2019s pick forklift driving as an example. Say I love driving a counterbalance lift and like being on it 10 hours a shift running up and down or around the warehouse all the time. A few things I might want to think about when seeking employment. One, how far am I willing to drive? Our time on the road driving to and from work is our personal time, time we could be spending with the family or on our hobbies or side hustles. We\u2019ll need to have a distance in mind. Second, our pay. What hourly wage are we willing to work for, it\u2019s important to know the difference of what we want to earn and what our present lifestyle requires here. We may be willing to take a little less than we\u2019re wanting if we just need to get our foot in the door with a company, we know will afford us the wages we want down the road. Maybe they only hire through an agency at a lower wage than we\u2019ll be making after 520 hours when we get hired on. Depending on the opportunities and things like our travel time it\u2019s something we may consider. Third, benefits. The benefits like profit sharing, insurance, 401k programs should be considered as a piece of our wages. Those things are a lot more important than we give them credit for most of the time. As a young employee, and when I was hired on at my new company,